Head-butting

I might give the impression that Mr. M's illness is the only thing that makes our relationship less than perfect. I don't want to use this space to air out our relationship too much. He doesn't read this blog regularly, because I talk to him about most of the things I write about here. So I suppose I could use it to vent a bit, but I don't want to violate the relationship's privacy.

But there's something about his personality that sometimes makes me think about breaking up with him, that's come up again and that I'm turning over in my mind.

My love for him is not in doubt, but just because you love someone doesn't mean you should be dreaming about living happily ever after with him.

He's a bit crotchety in a way that I find charming. I tease him about being crunchy on the outside and sweet on the inside, a tasty treat.

But sometimes when he's in a bad mood he's more than crotchety, he's snippy and mean. I realize that this is sort of about how you expect someone to behave and how you interpret that behavior. When he's sick and cranky, I've seen him snap at his mother when she fusses at him. When it happens, I'll think she shouldn't let him talk to her that way. But it's like they both get it out and it blows over. No one would doubt that he loves her and is a devoted son. She always talks about how sweet he treats her, and most of the time he really does.

But with me, his barbs go deep and I brood over it, long after he's forgotten about it. His anger is sharp but short-lived.

I'm not used to that kind of thing. In my family, it's rare for anyone to say anything overtly mean to anyone else--at least since my sister and I got out of our teens. We make veiled barbs, perhaps, and piss each other off. Sometimes we fight, but mostly we keep our annoyance to ourselves, or vent to our friends. Occasionally we even talk things out in a relatively mature and healthy manner. Well, not all that often...

When he gets testy, I feel like I don't want to be talked to that way, but it's not like he curses at me or calls me names. I'm not sure how to describe it without transcribing a whole conversation. Actually, he has called me a bitch before. I've known him three years and he's said it twice. So.

Other guys have called me a bitch--in the heat of a major blowout. I guess what I find disturbing is that relatively minor irritations can provoke harsh words or general testiness with him.

It might be that I read too much into it because I feel uncertain of his affection for me, so if he's irritated I think it's about me, and if he is irritated with me I think he doesn't like me anymore. That's mostly about my own baggage. There's every evidence that I am very important to him and otherwise he treats me very well, much better than any boyfriend I've had before. He puts a lot of effort into doing things to please me, and he does the same for his mom and even for his friends.

He's aware of his harsher side, at least to some extent. Once he told me that he'd been in a bad mood and been short tempered with his mom and he felt ashamed of that. On a day during my last visit when he was particularly sick, he told me and his mom that he felt like shit and he was in a bad mood and he didn't want to take it out on us, but he might not be able to help it.

An awful lot has gone seriously wrong in his life, and I can hardly blame him for being ill-tempered sometimes. In general he handles things with much more grace than I think I could muster in his place.

That doesn't mean that his snippiness is okay. It's definitely the thing I would change about him if I could--other than his health, of course. But I also have figured out that you can't change anyone, ever. You just have to decide what you can tolerate and what you can't. But I don't know what to make of it, so I can't decide whether I'm willing to live with it. If I tell him I won't tolerate it, I need to make sure I really mean it and I'm willing to walk the walk.

It would help to have some third-party perspective. Adam in particular is good at seeing what's going on with things like this. But because of the situation, Mr. M can't travel and none of my friends or family have met him. I know his family and friends, though. He has a couple of good long-term friends, and they're genuinely nice guys, which is to his credit.